Monday, July 29, 2013

Politics V: Guns and Democracy

Ruling means to have the power to enforce one's will, if necessary against any resistance. So in a democracy the people is supposed to be able to enforce their will in the state against any resistance from a particular elite or the government.

While power was based on physical strength in a primitive society, today it is based on firepower. Those who have more firepower, have the power. There is no other power, which is not derived from control and ownership of weapons. Nothing else matters when one is faced with superior weapons. The one with the gun is the one with the power. He can decide not to use his gun and voluntarily take orders from an unarmed man, but this is only his decision. And his decision is the only one that counts. Whatever freedom he may have granted his unarmed opponent, he can take it away at any time.

Now let's have a look at modern so called "democracies". Since they are supposed to be ruled by the people, we should be able to assume that it is the people who hold the superior firepower. In this case the people would have the power to make the ultimate decisions and remove and install governments at any time.

We all know that this is far from true. There are strict regulations on the possession of firearms and only the government owns all significant modern weapons. Although these weapons are carried by individual soldiers and policemen, they are not their property and only issued to them under very restricted conditions for a limited time.

Therefore it is the government that rules the state, not the people. The word "democracy" is nothing but a lie.

There is an odd ritual called "elections", in which the people are made to believe that they are asked for their opinions and are free to cast a vote and thereby exercise some kind of power. But the truth is that whatever the people vote, does not matter. The options that can be voted for are strictly limited. In practice this means that all established parties have exactly the same program. And no matter who wins the elections, everything stays the same. A typical example are the Democrats and the Republicans in the U.S. There is no real difference between these two parties. Membership in a particular party is independent from the political stance of a politician, and nothing in U.S. policy changes, whether a Democrat or a Republican is U.S. president.

In some rare occasions, when this system of limited options doesn't work just perfect yet, it can happen that the people votes for a candidate that is not in agreement with the ruling class. Such unfortunate cases are either solved by election fraud or the result of the elections is simply ignored. Because it is those who have the guns, not those who have the votes, who have the true power. Those with the guns can either decide to do what the majority voted for, if it is in agreement with their interests, or they simply don't do it. And there is nothing the voters can do against it.

This is not just a theoretical case, there are lots of examples in recent history, that election results are simply ignored, when the people with the guns don't agree with the outcome. The takeover of the Egyptian military was just the last example, although it might be disputed whether it reflects the will of the majority of the people or not. Other examples are Zimbabwe, where President Mugabe simply stayed in office after he lost the elections in 2008. Nobody cares about election results as long as he holds the weapons, because only weapons are power.

Power is based on weapons and only on weapons. In modern so called "democracies" unarmed people might have the impression that they are not oppressed, because the government does not interfere with their affairs. But the only reason for it is that their interests don't conflict with the government's interests. It is a false freedom, because it is based on the condition that the opinion of the people coincides with the opinion of the government. This granted freedom can be taken away at any moment, if the government wants. The people are slaves to the whims of the government as long as they are outgunned by the government. Their opinion is irrelevant and they are totally powerless.

This situation has neither anything to do with freedom nor with democracy.

In a democracy, the people must have the ultimate power in the state. The citizens must have more and better guns than the police force. They must be able to force the government out of office by their superior firepower, not just by votes. Elections are no expression of power, they are only opinion polls to predict the outcome in case the weapons decide.

To establish a democratic state, the police needs to be disarmed as a first step. Perhaps they can be allowed to carry a revolver with six rounds for their self-defense. But automatic guns must only be owned by private citizens. If these automatic weapons should be carried around all the time is a different question. It is not the job of the police or government employees to threaten the citizens.

In these rare cases that more firepower is needed against a criminal gang, the police can ask the citizens for assistance and establish an armed militia of free citizens for this purpose. There is no need to keep a standing heavily armed police force. A policeman is not the superior of the citizen. His duty is to serve and protect. And nobody wants a servant who is better armed than himself.

A system of government is not defined by elections or other empty rituals or spurious words, it is only defined by the possession of weapons. Who has the weapons, rules the country. In a monarchy the king owns all the guns. In an oligarchy it is the upper class who has control over the weapons. And in a democracy, it must be the people who have the guns.

Using this criterion we can for example see that the United States of America is not a democracy. It is a monarchy. President is just a title of the monarch who controls all the weapons in the country for a period of 4 years and cannot be removed from power by the will of the people (only by the will of the oligarchy under certain circumstances).

If we want a democracy, all weapons must be taken away from the police and returned into the hands of the people.